1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to instructional singing. More particularly, the invention concerns a method for teaching an individual to correctly sing a selected song using a novel visual display. The visual display comprises a string of discrete visual segments that are displayed synchronously with the playing of the audio portion of the song. The visual display guides the individual in following the musical tones in the song, and if desired, can be viewed along with only the instrumental portion of the song. Alternatively the visual display can be published in book, pamphlet or sheet music form for use by an individual in conjunction with playing a recording of the song.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Singing instruction with professional experts has been provided previously. However, such instruction has been expensive and generally available in limited geographic locations such as metropolitan areas. Such instruction often requires a student to travel to the studio of the instructor, which is often inconvenient and time consuming.
Another form of entertainment is known as Karaoke. Karaoke is an audio-visual entertainment system that plays an accompaniment to a song followed with the words on a video screen. Undesirably, Karaoke does not assist the individual in singing the song according to the proper musical tones intended by the songwriter or singer. Instead, Karaoke merely plays the instrumentals of a song with the vocals removed while visually displaying the words of the vocals. Thus, Karaoke provides no technical vocal guidance to the singer, which allows the individual to improperly sing the technical vocal requirements of the song. This is, however, often the desired result when Karaoke is used for comedic or entertainment purposes.
Thus, there is a need to develop a method to instruct individuals to sing in accord with the proper vocal placement intended by the songwriter. There is also a need to provide such a method that is easily accessible and simple to learn and does not require the knowledge of reading sheet music. There is also a need to provide such a method that allows the individual to select whether or not the vocals of the song are played with the instrumentals.
These and other difficulties of the prior art have been overcome according to the present invention.
The present invention relates to a method of making an audio-visual recording of any song for use by an individual for singing practice. In a preferred embodiment of the invention the method comprises first obtaining an audio recording of a song having both an instrumental portion and a vocal portion. Next, a written record of the vocal portion of the audio recording is produced. The audio recording of the song is then partitioned into a string of discrete time segments where each time segment is selected according to discernible audio characteristics in the audio recording. This done, the written record is then partitioned into a string of discrete phrase segments with each phrase segment corresponding to a discrete time segment of the string of discrete time segments. Pause segments are then inserted into the string of discrete phrase segments to correspond to discrete time segments having no vocal portion.
The discrete phrase segments are then modified in accordance with the discernible audio characteristics found in their corresponding discrete time segments of the audio recording of the song to establish a visual display comprising a string of discrete visual segments. The visual display is then synchronously displayed along with the playing of the audio recording of the audio song to the individual. In this way, the individual is uniquely provided visual assistance in executing the various musical tones carried out in the singing of the lyrics of the song. In one embodiment of the invention, a location indicator is provided to identify the location on the string of discrete visual segments that is then being heard by the student.
The modifications made to the discrete phrase segments are kept to a minimum in order to eliminate complexity to the audio-visual recording. For instance, most individuals do not have an understanding of sheet music, which is often complex and difficult to understand. Thus, providing visual guidance to an individual learning to sing is self-defeating if the guidance provided exhibits the same amount of complexity as that found in sheet music. Such complexity is self-defeating for teaching most people. In one embodiment of the present invention, each discrete phrase segment is first categorized as either a low vocal note, a high vocal note, or a middle range vocal note. Then, the written words of discrete phrase segments that are to be sung at a higher volume, that is louder, are converted into capital letters. Finally, those discrete phrase segments that are to be sung with vibrato, that is, with wavelike movement of the pitch at a sustained or held note, are overscored with a symbol in the form of a wavy line. In this embodiment, these are the only modifications necessary in providing the visual guidance needed to teach most individuals how to sing.
In one embodiment of the invention, the discrete visual segments are displayed in a top tier, a bottom tier, and a middle tier. The top tier is for displaying the discrete visual segments that have been categorized as high vocal notes, the bottom tier is for the display of those segments categorized as low vocal notes, and the middle tier for those discrete visual segments that have been categorized as middle vocal notes. This approach has been shown to provide a great visual assistance to those using the instructional audio-visual recording for singing instruction.
There are a number of means by which the audio-visual recording can be made available for individual use in singing instruction. For example, the audio-visual recordings can be made available on compact disks for display on a computer, or on videocassette or DVD for display on a television, or made available on a server for display on remote computers that are connected to receive data from the server. Alternatively, a published version of the visual portion of the recording in pamphlet of book format can be provided, in which case the individual can read/sing the song while playing recording of the song on any conventional audio device such as record player, or the like.